The Exorcist: An Essay From the Future

After a hard campaign against Hillary Clinton, Bobby Jindal has emerged as America’s next president in 2016. An essay from the future.

The date is November 8th, 2016. Polling stations have closed and the outcome of the US presidential election is becoming increasingly clear: the first African-American president isn’t succeeded by the first female president, but by the first Asian-American. Hillary Clinton has lost the election to Bobby Jindal.

Piyush “Bobby” Jindal was born to Indian parents in Louisiana’s capital Baton Rouge in 1971. In 2007, Jindal ascended to the governor’s mansion after defeating his opponents in a hard-fought nonpartisan blanket primary.

Among Republicans, Jindal’s most influential opponent for the presidency 2016 was Marco Rubio. The senator from Florida with Cuban roots appealed to the growing Hispanic constituency - but he was probably a bit “too Hispanic” for the conservative wing of the GOP. Sure, Hispanics will be American’s biggest ethnic group by 2040, but does that require elevating someone like Rubio to the presidency more than two decades earlier?

Paul Ryan, the former running mate of Mitt Romney and a known warrior against the status quo still suffered from the narrow defeat against Obama in 2012. Chris Christie, New Jersey’s governor, was seen as too undisciplined to carry the Republican flag to the White House (remember his photo-ops with Obama less than a week before the 2012 election?). Rob Portmann, the senator from Ohio, bore a big resemblance to Romney. Bob McDonnell, governor in Virginia, wasn’t edgy enough. Rick Santorum energized the evangelicals within the Republican Party but not the GOP establishment. Senator Kelly Ayotte hailed from New Hampshire, a state that was considered too unimportant to make her a viable contender for the White House. Nikki Haley, once considered a possible presidential candidate and an Indian-American like Jindal, had suffered defeat in South Carolina in 2014 and hadn’t returned to the campaign trail since.